Look to the Light
Advent is the freedom found in the invitation to hope when all that is around you is darkness, and yet you believe light is coming. To look forward and see the light before it dawns, so that when it does, we can proclaim with Isaiah, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.“ (Isaiah 9:2 NIV)
Israel longed for their Messiah for over 400 years. They longed for God to speak in the period where there were no prophets, and no prophetic words from God.
This is what makes the proclamation to Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, and Anna so important. It not only did the miraculous by bursting forth the spirit of Elijah to come and prepare the way for the Messiah, it was deafeningly loud. This was bright, disruptive, disturbing, confusing, and disorienting. They had gotten used to a season without prophets, and thus stopped looking for His voice and presence.
They had become so accustomed to the darkness and silence, that when light dawned and loud proclamations burst forth of the Messiah’s arrival in Bethlehem, nobody knew what to do or if they should believe it.
And why would they believe that God wrapped Himself in flesh in the arms of a teenage, engaged but unmarried, woman and would enter the world in a scandalous way?
Hope is believing the best is yet to come even when no evidence has yet presented itself. Freedom is the choice to believe when everything else tells you to choose otherwise.
This advent season, I encourage you to freely choose Christ and the hope of the Gospel, even when everything else in the world is begging you to turn your gaze elsewhere, may your eyes remain fixed on Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. (Hebrews 12:2)
